Allen holds out hope of catching Levine in Assembly race; tens of thousands of ballots remain to be counted

San Rafael Councilman Marc Levine appears to be on the verge of pulling off a major upset in his bid for the new 10th Assembly District seat.

But his opponent, 7th District Assemblyman Michael Allen, isn't conceding yet with just 1,663 votes separating the two candidates. Levine has 50.6 percent of the 134,715 ballots counted so far and Allen has 49.4 percent. The district, which was recently redrawn by a citizens commission, consists of all of Marin County, which has 155,000 registered voters, and a large section of Sonoma County that includes 112,267 registered voters.

"We're not planning on conceding," said Rolando Bonilla, a spokesman for Allen. "We understand there are a large number of votes out there that haven't been counted yet, and we don't want to disrespect the voters. Every vote needs to be counted."

Leo Wallach, a spokesman for Levine, said, "We're fully confident. Marc has won this thing."

Marin County Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold estimates that there are some 46,000 absentee, provisional, overseas and damaged ballots still to be counted in Marin County alone. Sonoma County elections officials said they weren't sure how many ballots remain to be counted there and may not have an estimate before Friday.

"I have no idea," said Elizabeth Acosta, Sonoma County elections manager. "It's really just a matter of how many absentee ballots got turned in at the polls."

Elections officials plan to release weekly updates of vote counts, with the first update coming Friday; they hope to finish by Thanksgiving, but they have until Dec. 4 to finish a full tally.

If Levine does win, he will have overcome a candidate who was endorsed by the California Democratic Party and received its full financial backing. Allen, a labor lawyer who serves as assistant majority floor leader in the Assembly, collected more than $1.4 million in campaign contributions and received more than $700,000 in support from independent expenditure committees. A large chunk of Allen's contributions came from the Democratic State Central Committee and the Democratic central committees of various counties.

Levine received more than $253,000 in contributions and more than $250,000 in support from independent expenditure committees, most of it from two large agricultural associations.

In June, West Marin author and activist Norman Solomon waited more than a week to concede to Dan Roberts in the primary for the 2nd District congressional seat after finishing just 1,379 votes behind Roberts. The gap narrowed to 172 votes before Solomon finally acknowledged that he would eventually fall short of the mark. After that election, Janice Atkinson, Sonoma County's registrar of voters, said Sonoma County typically has 25,000 to 35,000 uncounted ballots the day after an election.

Brian Sobel, a Petaluma-based political analyst, said he can understand why Allen wouldn't want to concede given the number of ballots left to be counted. But, Sobel said, "In reality, it will be tough for him to catch Levine."

Sonoma State University political science Professor David McCuan said, "I don't think this is going to turn around."

Sobel said the results Tuesday were much different than the June primary in which Allen finished first. In the primary, Allen picked up 14,884 votes in Sonoma County while Levine received just 7,456; Levine bested Allen in Marin by 426 votes. Allen moved from Sonoma County to an apartment in downtown San Rafael after the 7th District, which he was elected to represent in 2010, was splintered by redistricting in 2011.

In Tuesday's election, however, Allen performed only marginally better than Levine in Sonoma County, getting just 468 more votes than his opponent. Meanwhile, Levine increased his margin over Allen in Marin, picking up 2,131 more votes.

Some observers have speculated that the wave of negative mailers and television ads about Levine that Allen and his supporters bombarded voters with late in the race may have boomeranged — playing into Levine's characterization of the election as a David versus Goliath saga. Levine also used negative advertising to paint Allen as a Sacramento insider doing the bidding of "special interest" groups.

Sobel, however, suspects that the blitz of negative ads against Levine were a last-ditch effort to pull out the election after Allen's polling showed Levine in the lead. Sobel said it is more likely that Levine's improved performance in the general election resulted because Levine attracted votes from Republican and more conservative independent voters who had no one else to vote for. In the primary election, Sebastopol attorney Peter Mancus, the only Republican in the race, finished third with 21.4 percent of the vote.

Sobel said, "Just watching the shift from the primary, those additional votes for Marc had to come from somewhere. I'm guessing some of them came from Republicans."

Early in the general election campaign, the California Democratic Party sent out a mailer mocking Levine for attending the campaign kick-off for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in San Rafael.

Wallach said, "I think reaching across the aisle is something that voters welcomed."

The advocates for the new open primary system, which pits the top two vote-getters in the primary against each other regardless of party, promised it would help elect more moderate candidates to the Legislature. In Tuesday's election, there were 28 same-party races in California, 19 involving Democrats.

McCuan said, "The top-two system is going to change the dynamic of so many races. I think you're going to see a lot more candidates like Marc Levine."

And McCuan said if enough of these candidates are successful, they could become a powerful voting bloc, particularly if Democrats secure a supermajority in the Legislature.